


Dreams/Nightmares

by shookethspeare



Series: Code July 2020 [3]
Category: Code Lyoko
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:00:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25550212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shookethspeare/pseuds/shookethspeare
Summary: Here's my contribution for Code July Day 22: Dreams/Nightmares. I really don't think Yumi would've been able to bounce back that quickly from falling into the Digital Sea, and since we don't know what falling into the Digital Sea feels like...I decided to write my head-cannon for it.Anyways, it's Ulumi till the end of the line. I'm a huge Shakespeare nerd, and I've been dying to utilize references to that one time they did a knock-off of Romeo and Juliet a la Nicolas Poliakoff's writing.
Relationships: Yumi Ishiyama/Ulrich Stern
Series: Code July 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1818721
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24





	Dreams/Nightmares

“Yumi? Are you listening?” 

The Japanese girl looked up from her cafeteria plate, eyes coming to focus on the bespectacled boy in front of her. His left brow was perched high on his forehead, the other knotted downwards in confusion and concern. She smiled at him, brushing him off. 

“Yes, Einstein, something about the Supercomputer.” She knew her response was clipped, giving her the appearance of snippish frustration; but she was too exhausted to come up with much else, let alone scour her brain for the conversation she had accidentally tuned out of.

Next to her, she could feel Ulrich’s laser-like gaze boring holes into the side of her head, but she purposefully ignored him. 

Jeremie sighed, and turned back to his laptop. “Just please pay attention, this is important.”

She hadn’t meant to upset Jeremie; she hadn’t even meant to tune out of whatever computer genius-slash-XANA-slash-virtual world conversation they had been having moments before. She was just so _so_ tired. For the third night in a row she had woken up soaked in sweat, breathing hard and paralyzed with fear as she clawed her way from the iron grip of a fresh round of nightmares. 

Bad dreams weren’t an uncommon side-effect of XANA attacks and Lyoko trips - all three of the Warriors had complained about them at some point or another, especially after particularly grueling, near-death, experiences at the hands of the homicidal artificial intelligence. Usually, it was something they bounced back from; they had to. Afterall, there was no time to cower behind fear when the next attempt at destroying the human race could be mere hours away…

But there was something about clinging to the forest ledge, knowing you were seconds from losing your grip and taking a permanent dive into the digital void, that really messed with your psyche. 

_‘You’re pathetic.’_ She mused. _‘Ulrich nearly dies in a cloud of toxic gas, Odd jumps from a speeding bus and breaks his wrist, Aelita risks permanent deletion every day...meanwhile, you take a quick mental-vacation and suddenly you can’t sleep or eat?’_

In all honesty, the fall into the Digital Sea had been anything but a “mental vacation”. Trust Odd not to read the room and ask what being virtualized permanently was like, earning a smack upside the head from Ulrich. She had shrugged it off, telling them she couldn’t remember anything past pushing the megatank away from Aelita and likening it to those mothers who lift a whole car to save the baby underneath. It wasn’t the least bit of the truth, but how else could she explain what she’d experienced?

To make matters worse, Jeremie had been short-tempered with her all week. She couldn’t blame him; she had single handedly ruined months of work (and a stroke of sheer, dumb, luck on Odd’s part) by forcing Aelita to give up her materialization in favor of Yumi, herself. Yes, they all knew it only made sense that they bring Yumi back, but that didn’t stop her from feeling immense guilt every time Jeremie sighed in exhaustion at the prospect of starting over from scratch. 

“And you’re not listening _again_ , Yumi. Do you even _want_ to be in on this conversation?” 

It was all too much; Jeremie’s attitude, Yumi’s nightmares, the expectation of perfection even in the face of paralyzing trauma. She pushed her tray towards Odd, grabbing her backpack under her chair and rising to her feet. 

“Screw you, Jeremie!”

The cafeteria went dead silent, all eyes on her as she stalked to the doors and out of sight. None of the boys followed her out, and she breathed a sigh of relief; she had twenty minutes to find a good spot to cry before her next class. 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_“Yumi! Hang on just a bit longer, okay? Ulrich’s almost there!”_

_She tightened her grip on the ledge, praying to whatever God was out there that she could hold on just long enough for Aelita to deactivate that damned tower. Even in her own predicament she felt immense guilt thinking that Ulrich had likely pushed through a very disorienting concussion to come and save her; those damned bulldozers._

_“I can’t...I can’t hold on…!” Her hand was beginning to cramp, her fingers aching to be released from the tightly wound position they were in. She could hear running coming from somewhere above her, footsteps getting closer and closer._

_Just as Ulrich’s head and torso peeked over the ledge, Yumi’s hand spasmed and went completely limp. The feeling of weightlessness was jarring, like she was a dining set and the tablecloth had been ripped out from under her._

_She didn’t know if she screamed, or how long she fell for; but the next thing she felt aware of was a hazy nothingness, like floating through thick plumes of water vapor. Thinking was like grasping at curls of smoke; she couldn’t hold onto one thought long enough to make sense of it, and the nothingness quickly took hold again. The only thing of consistency was the ebb and flow of sheer, full-bodied, panic that seized her when she could almost remember just how she had gotten herself there…_

_Then, suddenly, there was a tugging feeling in the back of her mind as though something was pulling her back; out of the fog, out of the vapor, returning her to a consciousness that was crushing and pushing in on all sides. A bright, warm, light blinded her and she gasped, choking down as much air as she could as though she had been starved of it her whole life-_

Yumi sat straight up in bed, her sweat-soaked sheets falling from her torso and tangling around her legs. She heaved a few deep breaths, willing her heart rate to return to normal and her vision to clear.

_Tap tap tap_

Her head whipped around to her window and she smacked her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. 

Thank god, it was just Ulrich.

She crept to the window and opened it, glaring at him.

"Hey there, Juliet." He teased. 

“What the hell are you doing here!” She hissed back, making room for him to clamber through. She eyed the trellis he had climbed up, checking for damage, before closing her window and turning to the boy. His mouth was set in a gentle smile, but his eyes were alive with worry and...was that sadness? 

He sat at the edge of her bed, pulling off his shoes. “You didn’t come see us after your last class, and then you weren’t answering your phone. I got worried, so I snuck out after rounds.” 

As if the answer was so simple. She hadn’t answered, so he climbed the trellis below her window at...what time was it? She glanced at her alarm clock.

“It’s 3 o’clock in the morning, Ulrich.” Yumi muttered, plopping back down on her bed. God, she was so tired; she could feel it in every part of her body as though it had seeped in there. “My parents will kill you if they know you’re here.”

“What happened at lunch? You never snap at Jeremie like that.” 

It was true, out of all of them she was the most patient with the boy genius.

Ulrich must’ve noticed her hesitation, because he crawled up next to her and held out an upturned palm for her to grasp. She took his hand, gratefully. She was glad that the pair had become more comfortable with expressing their affection, recently; there was something so wonderfully grounding about the boy, as though she didn’t have to bear any specific burden alone. That was exactly what the barely noticeable squeeze he gave her meant: I’m here for you, so open up to me.

She wished honesty like that came easier to her. 

“I just...haven’t been sleeping.” It was at least half of the truth, but Ulrich waited her silence out until she spoke again. 

“I’ve been having nightmares. About the Digital Sea.”

A long silence stretched on between them, and Yumi was once again worried that her exhaustion and fear were pathetic in the eyes of her teammate; until Ulrich turned his head slightly and pressed a chaste kiss to her forehead, right at the base of her hairline. She was glad that her bright red face was well hidden in the darkness of her room. 

From what little light was streaming in through the windows, she could see a hint of pink on his own cheeks.

“I wish you’d told me sooner.” He muttered, and she let her head drop onto his shoulder. “You shouldn’t...we’re a team, you shouldn’t keep things like this from me. From us.”

“I know, but Jeremie’s already pissed that he wasted the materialization on me instead of Aelit-”

Ulrich gripped her hand, tight, looking right at her. His eyebrows were knitted together in a mix of confusion and distress, and she wished she could reach over and smooth the frown lines off of his face. He didn’t need those just because of her.

“Don’t say that. Do not say that. It wasn’t ‘wasted’ on you. Aelita was right when she said your place is here. Jeremie’s just...Jeremie’s just Jeremie. He doesn’t know how to express himself properly.”

Yumi felt a strange sense of calm wash over her as Ulrich continued reassuring her. Every insecurity from the past week was miniscule compared to the patience and kindness the boy was showing her. As the anxiety of her nightmares and the uncertainty of her place in the group faded, so did her energy; and soon, she found herself drifting off.

Until a very painful pinch to her bicep startled her awake. “Ouch! What the heck was that for..?” She muttered, glaring at the boy. As soon as her head left his shoulder he crawled to the edge of her bed to put his shoes back on. 

“You need to get some sleep, and I don’t want to risk being caught by your parents.” He explained. Before he moved to the window he leaned forward and pecked his lips against hers. “Get some rest.”

It was clear the affection was unusual for _both_ of them.

Once the brunet was safely out of the window and down the trellis, Yumi crawled back under the covers and curled up on her side. Her fingers brushed at her lips where Ulrich had kissed her and she smiled softly to herself before drifting off once more. 

For the first time in a week, she slept soundly.

**Author's Note:**

> Here's my contribution for Code July Day 22: Dreams/Nightmares. I really don't think Yumi would've been able to bounce back that quickly from falling into the Digital Sea, and since we don't know what falling into the Digital Sea feels like...I decided to write my head-cannon for it. 
> 
> Anyways, it's Ulumi till the end of the line. I'm a huge Shakespeare nerd, and I've been dying to utilize references to that one time they did a knock-off of Romeo and Juliet a la Nicolas Poliakoff's writing.


End file.
